Heaven
by numina
Summary: Where's your heaven? [KAIORA] [AU ONESHOT] R&R.


I'm going through a phase... Why? Just because.

F**o**r the **some**_one_ who had_ **been**_ _my_ inspira**tion.**

And for all the readers of **Soaring On Broken Wings**.

Song lyrics are from DJ Sammy's **_Heaven_**. Beautiful song.

Kingdom Hearts (c) Square-Enix.

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**_h e a v e n_**

**Sora**x_Kairi_

"Sora?"

"Hm?" he managed to murmur, looking down at the auburn-haired girl wrapped in his arms. Kairi shifted slightly, legs touching his, as she turned to look at him.

"Why'd you come back?" she asked, beryl eyes curious.

"Because," Sora paused, searching his mind for the right words. "...ah. I can't explain it."

"Is it because you're just a romantic bum and you had to come back for me?"

He raised an eyebrow and stared at her, a smile curving his lips upwards. "Maybe."

She laughed, and leant more into him, coughing a cough that mightv'e been used to hide a yawn. He nuzzled her head and breathed in the sweet smell of strawberries. Kairi loved strawberries, and Sora loved Kairi, so it came as a consequence that Sora eventually liked strawberries.

(_oh, thinking about our younger years_)

They had a long history together.

He and the crimson-tressed girl.

Playing on the pristine white sands of the shores of Destiny Islands, playing in the warm light of the sun, playing at the island arcade down around the docks, playing around the cool cerulean blue waters lapping at the powdery grains of beach. He could remember the three of them, a trinity, he, Kairi, and best-friend Riku, running around like the seven-year-olds that they were.

Then, back then, Sora had the biggest crush on Kairi, flushing red every single time the girl managed to touch his hand or his face or in fact even if she just managed to insomuch as _breathe_ on him. His silver-haired friend would just stare, laugh, and point, making Kairi blush as well.

School was the same experience; they all had their strong points and their weak ones. Then hormones ranged, and quite suddenly, the innocence was gone. The fact that Riku had a longtime crush on Kairi hit Sora with the force of a rushing truck. Best friends became rivals, school became a battleground, every single waking moment a competition.

(_there was only you and me)_

Finally Kairi herself had gotten fed up, upset at the sight of the two once-best-friends fighting.

She was so tired of the constant shouldering and the constant glaring and the constant mutterings under one's breath of how stupid this was and how _he_ should just hand over the copper-haired girl to _him_. Sora's sapphire eyes had darkened and Riku's aquamarine eyes stormy, dark and stormy with jealousy and pain and anger.

So Kairi, on a whim, just one day walked up to the platinum-haired boy and gave him a innocent kiss on the cheek and a warm hug. She meant to give Sora one too, to show that they were just equal in her own eyes, but when she saw the _hurt_ and the _pain_ and the solitary sparkling tear tracing its path down his tanned cheek from his shimmering cerulean blue eye --- her heart knew that they weren't. Sora and Riku weren't equal.

Sora had her heart on an invisible pedestal, and she didn't quite see it until it was too late.

Nobody actually knew the spiky-haired boy would take it seriously. Even Riku saw what she was going to do, and he conceded right then and there. But Sora was a very sensitive one, and he was hurt. He was hurt so much.

The boy moved out of the Islands, traumatized.

_(we were young we were wild and free)_

Sora wasn't stupid, nor was he blind to see that Kairi did love him back. The way she cried out his name when he ran from the sight of a Riku blushing and a Kairi kissing. Sure, kissing could mean anything, but to him, to Sora, it meant the world.

But still she kissed Riku, and it was all that mattered.

He pleaded and even went to his knees to ask his mother if he could live with his cousin in Twilight Town. Mothers were always overly concerned, and his was no exception. She even offered to speak to both Riku and Kairi's mothers, but (_for the love of God _with much kneeling and clasped hands) Sora protested. Conceded. Packed his things and never looked back. He left his heart on the white sand shores, shriveled in the heat of broken, unrequited love.

Roxas had tried his best to cheer Sora up, and for a while, for some years, he did. He momentarily pushed the issue to the back of his head and went on life as usual, going to Twilight Academy and sitting through lessons and laughing with friends and complaining about teenage life in general, like the rest of them.

But slowly, sneakily, like a predator moving in for the kill, the memories returned, and soon every time Roxas and Hayner fought over Olette, it came back to him. He and Riku fighting over Kairi. Fighting tooth and nail.

He missed Riku: their laughs, pranks, and perspective on life. He also missed Kairi. No...he needed her.

However, Fate intervened, and a frail, flaxen-haired girl walked into their lives without much ado. Naminé was her name, and drawing was her game, and Roxas was smitten. Badly. So the conflict was solved, and the problem ended.

Sora watched, and wondered. And decided. Between him and Riku, Fate was not likely to intervene (for Sora somehow knew that Fate didn't like him one bit), and whatever he said, whatever he told himself, whatever happened, his love for Kairi was still there. And he was going to get her back. Whatever it took.

It also didn't help that Naminé looked exactly like Kairi.

_(Now, nothing can take you away from me)_

That very afternoon he went back to the Islands, berating himself for being so impossibly sappy and romantic and honest-to-goodness obsessed. But it was Kairi, and when it came to her, it was his everything.

_(We've been down that road before)_

_But that's over now_

_You keep me coming back for more)_

Now she was in his arms, and everything was all right in the world. Riku had conceded that fateful day (an irony; Sora therefore concluded that Fate hated him), he learned, and was all too willing to help them get back together.

_(baby, you're all that I want_

_When you're lying here in my arms)_

"I was an idiot back then," Sora mused, catching her hand in his and toying with her slim tapered fingers.

"Ah, but you were _my_ idiot," she proclaimed softly, giggling. Soon after, he couldn't help but start to laugh too. "And you still _are_, lazy bum."

"You'll never get tired of calling me that, won't you?"

She made a little coughing noise, barely enough to conceal her smile behind cherry-red lips. "Do you really have to know?"

_(I'm finding it hard to believe_

_We're in heaven)_

They had been lying here for something like an hour now, and they were content. Sora had not felt this happy for a long time, and he was sure the copper-haired girl felt the same.

Kairi sighed, and she subconsciously squeezed his hand. Sora's eyes widened a fraction of an inch before catching himself and squeezing her hand back. Her head nodded forward, and he shook her gently.

"Don't fall asleep yet, Kairi."

The girl choked, and leant on his shoulder, beryl eyes looking up at him and she bopped his foot lightly with her own. "I'm not," she said quietly. "Sora...do you believe in heaven?"

He blinked, and stared at her, an unspoken question eloquently told in a raised eyebrow. She tilted her head to the side in silent agreement. "With blinding white and angels everywhere? _That_ heaven?"

"Yeah."

Sora paused, and smoothed the crimson hair from her forehead, playing with the silky strawberry-scented strands. "I guess...I don't."

She twisted back slowly to face him, beryl eyes half-lidded but geniunely curious. "You don't?"

"Nah," he whispered into her ear as he cradled his chin in the nook of her soft shoulder. "I do believe in heaven. And where I am now, _this_ is heaven. Whenever I'm with you, I'm in heaven, and that's good enough for me."

Kairi giggled quietly. "Romantic sap."

"I don't regret that."

"In that case then..." she rested her head back, "I'm in heaven right now."

A smile played on both their lips, contented and happy. The girl closed her eyes slowly, placing her warm hands on his. "I feel sleepy, Sora."

"S' okay, the feeling is mutual, " he replied thickly, because the feeling of drowsiness was slowly creeping up his consciousness as well, spreading a pleasant tingliness throughout his body. "Love you, Kai."

She squeezed her hand once more. "Love you too."

Her breaths then quieted, and slowed down into rhymthic deep rising and falling. Sora brushed a lock of hair splayed across her sweat-tinged face, and pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead, before losing himself to his drowsiness.

(_And love is all that I need_

_And I found it there in your heart)_

"_SORA! KAIRI!_" Riku bellowed, trying to wrench himself free of Tidus' and Wakka's combined grip. Tears sprung to his eyes with every pained syllable.

"Riku, no!" the blonde blitzballer said once again, pulling the silver-haired boy back into the cool shade of night. "It's no use...It's too late."

Riku shook his head stubbornly, even as if realization was slowly gripping his heart and breaking it into two. He watched as the blazing inferno leapt higher and higher, eating away at the charred black that was Destiny Academy. Firefighters tried in vain to put out the fire, but it seemed the only option was to let the fire burn itself out.

He had no choice but to let them go.

He sank to his knees, limp with the knowledge that he'll never laugh with Sora and Kairi again. His two best friends. He scrabbled blindly, painfully at the tufts of grass, as people clustered around him, offering words of comfort and shed tears. As he looked into the fire, his heart broke, and he let his tears fall.

Damn Sora and his stubborness.

_(It isn't too hard to see)_

A newspaper clipping. Yellowed and frayed at the edges.

Perched on a mahogany shelf.

_The Destiny Herald / August 13, 2074 AE_

_**FIRE CLAIMS TWO LIVES**_

_Destiny Academy went down in flames last night, and took two innocent students with it._

_Sora Hikari and Kairi Dalmasca's bodies were found in one of the Academy's shower rooms around nine-thirty this morning, when the fire had finally burnt out. Cause of death, according to the coroner, was smoke inhalation._

_Hikari had only arrived in Destiny Islands that morning, said Riku Alcaia, a close friend of the couple. Upon hearing of the fire, the boy immediately bolted out of the Alcaia home and sprinted into the Academy. Eyewitnesses say he ran straight into the fire upon learning that Dalmasca, resident Miss Islands, had been trapped inside by collapsed concrete. Dalmasca was in the process of making sure that the preschool department had gotten out when she herself was trapped._

_Moments after Hikari rushed into the burning building, the main entrance collapsed entirely, sealing off the only accessible entrance._

_Authorities are still trying to deduce who the culprit is._

_The pair's funerals will be held at Fate's Outlook, overlooking a majestic view of Destiny Islands._

_(We're in heaven)_

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da-dun. b'cause I'm feeling depressed right now.

_read_&**review. **

luffs, numina-naminé.


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